Three more IRA priests in Claudy link

Calls have been made for a full public inquiry into the role of clergymen in terrorism after The Observer learnt that three more priests were involved with the Provisional IRA at the time of the 1972 Claudy bomb massacre.

One of the priests was the IRA's officer commanding the Provos' North Antrim Brigade. He cannot be named for legal reasons.

The other priests who joined the IRA at the beginning of the Ulster Troubles were Father Patrick Fell and Father John Burns.

Fell served more than 10 years in an English jail over a conspiracy to cause explosions in Coventry during the early Seventies. He was convicted alongside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, two IRA men who died on hunger strike in English prisons.

On his release Fell, like the priest who bombed Claudy, Father James Chesney, was allowed to serve as a priest in a rural parish in Donegal.

In 1972, Burns disappeared from his parish at St Theresa's Catholic Church in the Possilpark area of Glasgow. He fled back to Ireland after Strathclyde police raided his home searching for weapons and explosives. He was given sanctuary by fellow priests but later left the priesthood.

The role of the priests emerged following revelations that the Catholic hierarchy and the British Government colluded to cover-up the involvement of Chesney in the Claudy atrocity.

Chesney was a member of the IRA unit that left three 'no warning' bombs in the Co Derry village in July 1972. Nine people including three children were killed.

Chesney's involvement in the massacre was discussed at a private meeting in December 1972 between the first Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw and Cardinal William Conway, leader of Ireland's Catholics.

Documents found by police showed that Whitelaw and Conway were both aware of Chesney's activities. A briefing note was sent by a senior official at the Northern Ire land Office to police headquarters the next day.

Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kincaid - the officer currently investigating Claudy - said the letter states that the cardinal mentioned the possibility of transferring the priest to Donegal. By January 1973 'intelligence suggested he was working there'.

Chesney was actually transferred to a parish at Malin Head, in Co Donegal across the border. He died from cancer in 1980.

Last night, a prominent community activist in Derry called for the resignation of the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. Proinsias O'Mianain, a leading figure in the Irish language movement and a Catholic, also demanded a public inquiry.

'These people should have been reported to the police as soon as their murderous activities came to light. But instead the Church just moved them to remote parishes in the Irish Republic ... and then engaged in a conspiracy of silence which blocked investigations.'

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, also called for a Bloody Sunday-style inquiry into the Claudy bombing which he said would reveal the role of other priests in terrorism.